Honorary Knight Commander
"Against the heartlessness of the Christian religion every grand and tender soul should enter solemn protest. The god of Hell should be held in loathing, contempt and scorn."
CONFLICTFor ages, a deadly conflict has been waged between a few brave men and women of thought and genius upon the one side, and the great ignorant religious mass on the other. This is the war between Science and Faith. The few have appealed to reason, to honor, to law, to freedom, to the known, and to happiness here in this world. The many have appealed to prejudice, to fear, to miracle, to slavery, to the unknown, and to misery hereafter. The few have said, "Think!" The many have said, "Believe!"
Against the heartlessness of the Christian religion every grand and tender soul should enter solemn protest. The god of Hell should be held in loathing, contempt and scorn. A god who threatens eternal pain should be hated, not loved; cursed, not worshipped. A heaven presided over by such a god must be below the meanest hell. I want no part in any heaven in which the saved, the ransomed and redeemed will drown with shouts of joy the cries and sobs of hell, in which happiness will forget misery, where the tears of the lost only increase laughter and double bliss.
No man of intelligence, no one whose brain had not been poisoned by superstition, paralyzed by fear, can read the Old Testament without being forced to the conclusion that our god was a wild beast. If we must have a god, let him be merciful. Let us remember that 'the quality of mercy is not strained.' Let us remember that when the sword of Justice becomes a staff to support the weak, it bursts into blossom, and that the perfume of that flower is the only incense, the only offering, the only sacrifice that mercy will accept.
We are told in the Pentateuch (first five books of the Old Testament) that god, the father of us all, gave thousands of maidens, after having killed their fathers, and their brothers, to satisfy the brutal lusts of savage men. If there be a god, I pray him to write in his book, opposite my name, that I denied this lie for him.
Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith. Banish me from Eden when you will, but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
The inspiration of the Bible depends on the credulity of him who reads.
Religion has not civilised man, man has civilised religion.
THE TRUTH
Somebody ought to tell the truth about the Bible. The preachers dare not because they would be driven from their pulpits. Professors in colleges dare not, because they would lose their salaries. Politicians dare not. They would be defeated. Editors dare not. They would lose subscribers. Merchants dare not, because they might lose customers. Men of fashion dare not, fearing that they would lose caste. Even clerks dare not, because they might be discharged. And so I thought I would do it myself.
There are many millions of people who believe the Bible to be the inspired word of God � millions who think that this book is staff and guide, counsellor and consoler; that it fills the present with peace and the future with hope � millions who believe that it is the fountain of law, justice and mercy, and that to its wise and benign teachings the world is indebted for its liberty, wealth and civilization � millions who imagine that this book is a revelation from the wisdom and love of god to the brain and heart of man � millions who regard this book as a torch that conquers the darkness of death, and pours its radiance on another world � a world without a tear.
They forget its ignorance and savagery, its hatred of liberty, its religious persecution; they remember heaven but they forget the dungeon of eternal pain.They forget that it imprisons the brain and corrupts the heart. They forget that it is the enemy of intellectual freedom.
Ministers wonder how I can be wicked enough to attack the Bible. I will tell them:
This book, the Bible, has persecuted, even unto death, the wisest and the best. This book stayed and stopped the onward movement of the human race. This book poisoned the fountains of learning and misdirected the energies of man.
This book is the enemy of freedom, the support of slavery. This book sowed the seeds of hatred in families and nations, fed the flames of war, and impoverished the world. This book is the breastwork of kings and tyrants � the enslaver of women and children. This book has corrupted parliaments and courts. This book has made colleges and universities the teachers of error and the haters of science.
This book has filled Christendom with hateful, cruel, ignorant and warring sects. This book taught men to kill their fellows for religion's sake. This book founded the Inquisition, invented the instruments of torture, built the dungeons in which the good and loving languished, forged the chains that rusted in their flesh, erected the scaffolds whereon they died. This book piled fagots about the feet of the just. This book drove reason from the minds of millions and filled the asylums with the insane.
This book has caused fathers and mothers to shed the blood of their babes. This book was the auction block on which the slave-mother stood when she was sold from her child. This book filled the sails of the slave-trader and made merchandise of human flesh. This book lighted the fires that burned 'witches' and 'wizards'. This book filled the darkness with ghouls and ghosts, and the bodies of men and women with devils. This book polluted the souls of men with the infamous dogma of eternal pain.
This book made credulity the greatest of virtues, and investigation the greatest of crimes. This book filled nations with hermits, monks and nuns � with the pious and the useless. This book placed the ignorant and unclean saint above the philosopher and philanthropist. This book taught man to despise the joys of this life, that he might be happy in another � to waste this world for the sake of the next.
I attack this book because it is the enemy of human liberty � the greatest obstruction across the highway of human progress.
Let me ask the ministers one question:
How can you be wicked enough to defend this book?
All that is necessary, as it seems to me, to convince any reasonable person that the Bible is simply and purely of human invention�of barbarian invention�is to read it. Read it as you would any other book; think of it as you would of any other; get the bandage of reverence from your eyes; drive from your heart the phantom of fear; push from the throne of your brain the cowled form of superstition � then read the Holy Bible, and you will be amazed that you ever, for one moment, supposed a being of infinite wisdom, goodness and purity, to be the author of such ignorance and of such atrocity.
Believers in the Bible are loud in their denunciation of what they are pleased to call the immoral literature of the world; and yet few books have been published containing more moral filth than this inspired word of god.
As a matter of fact, men have risen from a perusal of the Bible, and murdered their wives. They have risen from reading its pages, and inflicted cruel and even mortal blows upon their children. Men have risen from reading the Bible and torn the flesh of others with red-hot pincers. They have laid down the sacred volume long enough to pour molten lead into the ears of others There is no crime that Bible readers and Bible believers and Bible worshippers and Bible defenders have not committed.
In nearly all the theologies, mythologies and religions, the devils have been much more humane and merciful than the gods. No devil ever gave one of his generals an order to kill children and to rip open the bodies of pregnant women. Such barbarities were always ordered by the good gods. The frightful famine, during which the dying child with pallid lips sucked the withered bosom of a dead mother, was sent by the loving gods. No devil was ever charged with such fiendish brutality. One of these gods, according to the account, drowned an entire world, with the exception of eight persons. The old, the young, the beautiful and the helpless were remorselessly devoured by the shoreless sea. This, the most fearful tragedy that the imagination of ignorant priests ever conceived, was the act, not of a devil, but of a god, so-called, whom men ignorantly worship unto this day. What a stain such an act would leave upon the character of a devil!
FREE!
When I became convinced that the Universe is natural�that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts and bars, and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf or a slave.
There was for me no master in all the wide world�not even in infinite space. I was free
�free to think, to express my thoughts
�free to live to my own ideal
�free to live for myself and those I loved
�free to use all my faculties, all my senses
�free to spread imagination's wings
�free to judge and determine for myself
�free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all the "inspired" books that savages have produced, and all the barbarous legends of the past
�free from popes and priests
�free from all the "called" and "set apart"
�free from sanctified mistakes and holy lies
�free from the fear of eternal pain
�free from the winged monsters of the night
�free from devils, ghosts and gods.
For the first time I was free. There were no prohibited places in all the realms of thought
�no air, no space, where fancy could not spread her painted wings
�no chains for my limbs
�no lashes for my back
�no fires for my flesh
�no master's frown or threat
�no following another's steps
�no need to bow, or cringe, or crawl, or utter lying words. I was free. I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously, faced all worlds.And then my heart was filled with gratitude, with thankfulness, and went out in love to all the heroes, the thinkers who gave their lives for the liberty of hand and brain�for the freedom of labor and thought�to those who fell on the fierce fields of war, to those who died in dungeons bound with chains�to those who proudly mounted scaffold's stairs�to those whose bones were crushed, whose flesh was scarred and torn�to those by fire consumed�to all the wise, the good, the brave of every land, whose thoughts and deeds have given freedom to the sons of men. And then I vowed to grasp the torch that they had held, and to hold it high, that light might conquer darkness still.
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